The Remington is a family well known for their passion for typewriters and gun collection. However, their typewriters are what made them famous. Eliphalet Remington founded the Remington Company in the year 1816. They began their typewriter revolution in 1868 by gaining a contract to manufacture the Giddon and Sholes typewriters. The Sholes and Giddon typewriter was that first device that enabled an operator to type faster than when writing by hand.

After the success of the Sholes and Giddon typewriter, Remington started their production of typewriters in 1873. However, after their huge success, Eliphalet Remington and his sons sold Remington Typewriters to Standard Typewriter Manufacturing Company in 1886.

The company later changed the name from Standard Typewriter to Remington Typewriter Company in 1902. It later merged with Rand Kardex Bureau to form Remington Rand in 1927. Remington Brand continued to manufacture office equipment and they then upgraded to become a significant computer business. It also currently produces electric razors. Over the years, there has been a diversity of design for the Remington typewriters. The first design for the typewriters had a keyboard that did not use the lowercase letters. It was and is still is a vintage typewriter with the first QWERTY typing control pad. The first Remington Typewriter used capital letters, and it had lids that covered the Keyboards.

The design, however, improved over the years. It had the sides open while the keyboard remained covered. However, it still typed uppercase letters because of the lack of Lowercase letters. Afterward, the typewriters moved from being immobile to portable with every design. For the third vintage typewriter, the carriage became easier to remove, and it had forty-two keys. However, it was not until typewriter number six where the improvements began.

The Remington Company began making typewriters that were portable, included more keys, and had more appealing designs ideally unlike their earlier versions.

Famous Remington Typewriters

Remington No. 1

The Remington No.1 was the first mechanical typewriter to take the Remington name. The typewriter was created in the Year 1875. It was the upgrade of the original Sholes and Giddon typewriter. The differences were however minimal. The typewriter wrote in Capital letters, and it had a lid, which covered the typewriter’s keyboard and carriage when it was not in use.

Remington No.2

Unlike the Remington No. 1, this model was a definite upgrade from the first mechanical typewriter version. The typewriter was better than the earlier version in shape and size. It has a close resemblance to the modern typewriters. The typewriter has 39 keys. Historically, it was the first typewriter that allowed its users to type in both upper and lower case letters on the same key.

Remington Standard No. 7

The Remington No. 7 became quite popular, unlike the other version that followed No.2. The main reason for its popularity lies in the fact that it had foreign language addition, unlike previous versions. It also had other extra keys the other typewriters did not have.

The creation of the Remington typewriters was the beginning of a typewriter revolution unlike any other. Some of the famous artists/ writers used and still use the Remington typewriters to type their content. Among these famous artists/ writers are Mark Twain, Harlan Ellison, and Joy Adamson.

Mark Twain used the Remington No. 2 typewriter to write the Tom Sawyer Manuscript. The manuscript became the first ever to be published. Harlan Ellison was a science fiction writer who started his typing in 1949 after his mother bought him the Remington portable. Joy Adamson began her writing journey after the purchase of the Remington portable typewriter.

Astonishingly, despite the development of computers over the years, the Remington typewriters are still quite popular. The main reason for their popularity lies in the fact that they are reliable and dependable mechanical typewriters. They are also durable, unlike the modern computers we currently use. Which boils down to the question, why do people still use typewriters?

First for Aesthetic reasons. For a majority of people, a typewriter is a source of art. It unlocks another side of contraption by helping create a visual art out of the typewriters character. Another reason would be the typewriter comes in handy when there is no electricity especially for writers.